Mueller Report Volume 1
Executive Summary to Volume 1 You can find the original document here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-document.html#g-page-12 How Russia Used Social Media * There is a very rich Russian with a lot of political power named Yevgeniy Prigozhin. He is connected to the leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The report blacked out his other connections so we can't read those. * Prigozhin paid for something called the Internet Research Agency. * The Internet Research Agency was in St Petersburg, Russia. It used social media (like Facebook) to make Americans argue about politics more. * In 2014, this Russian agency sent spies to America with instructions. Those instructions are blacked out. * In 2014 and 2015, this Russian agency made fake social media accounts and fake groups. * They tried to make Americans more unhappy with their government and the way their elections work. * This is called “information warfare” because they used fake information to make Americans fight. * In 2016 this Russian agency started pushing Americans to elect Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton. * Pretending to be Americans, they paid for political ads that were pro Trump and anti Hilary. * They even started political rallies for Donald Trump. * No Americans asked Russia to do this. How Russia Stole Information * There is a Russian intelligence agency, which is part of the Russian army, called the GRU. * March 2016: They started to hack into the emails of volunteers and employees of the Clinton Campaign. * April 2016: They hacked into the computer networks of two Democratic committees: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. * The GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from these computer networks and emails. * June 2016: The GRU started sharing these stolen documents. * At first they used two accounts: DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. * Later, they used Wikileaks. * Trump knew they would use Wikileaks before it happened. * Someone (whose name is blacked out) told important members of the Trump Campaign that Wikileaks was going to share information on Hillary Clinton. This information would make Hillary look bad. * Trump said at a rally that Russia should get emails from Clinton’s servers. * July 2016: Wikileaks started sharing information from the Clinton hacks. * Several sentences here are blacked out. * October 7 2016: The news started sharing a video of Trump saying offensive things about women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWux5BAczk * Less than an hour later, Wikileaks released emails that Russia had stolen from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. * Section 3 of this report talks more about Russian hacking and how Trump tried to get Clinton’s emails. Russian Contacts with Trump * People from Trump’s Campaign met several times with people connected to the Russian government. * Types of meetings: ** Business connections ** Offers to help Trump ** Invitations for Trump to meet Putin ** Suggested pro-Russia policy positions * Russia wanted Trump to be president and worked hard to get Americans to vote for him. * Trump wanted information about Clinton from Russia so people would vote for him instead. * But there is no proof of a conspiracy. Section 4 talks about all of the connections between the Trump Campaign and Russia, but here are some of the most important ones: Timeline of Trump/Russia Connections 2015: * Trump’s company had plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Moscow is the capital of Russia. * Trump signed a Letter of Intent November 2015 and in January of 2016. * Trump was still planning to build this tower in June 2016 when Russia started trying to get him elected president. * Trump even considered flying out to Russia to work on the project. Spring 2016: * A man named Joseph Mifsud, who was a professor in London, visited Russia in April of 2016. * When he got back from his trip, he told George Papadopolous that Russia had thousands of Clinton’s emails. * One week later, Papadoplous told someone who represents another country that Russia was offering to help Trump by giving him Clinton’s emails. * Papadopolous, Mifsud, and two Russians spent months trying to set up a meeting between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government. * But no meeting happened. Summer 2016 * June 2016: a Russian lawyer emailed Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and offered to give Trump information about Hillary Clinton. * The email said the information would show the Russian government’s support for Trump. * June 9 2016: the Russian lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner (Trump’s son in law), and Paul Manafort (the campaign chairman at that time). * They expected the lawyer to give them information on Clinton. But the lawyer did not give them the information. * June 14 2016: The Democrats announced that Russia had hacked into their networks and stolen information. Some of the stolen information was about Trump. * July 2016:Trump’s foreign policy advisor at the time, Carter Page, travelled to Russia to give a speech. ** When he came back, he met two Russian agents. ** One of those agents was charged with being a spy in 2015. ** Page wanted the US to help Russia and the news media started to talk about it. ** By now the US government was sure that Russia was trying to mess with the election. ** If the Trump Campaign was getting help from Russia they would be breaking the law. ** The FBI started to look into this. * August 2 2016: Trump's Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort, met with a businessman he knew. ** The businessman’s name is Konstantin Kilimnik. ** The FBI thinks Kilimnik may be a spy. ** Kilimnik wanted to talk to Manafort about a “peace plan” for Ukraine. ** At that time Russia was getting ready to invade Ukraine. Russia had been fighting with Ukraine over part of Ukraine called Crimea for years. ** Kilimnik’s “peace plan” was actually a sneaky way for Russia to get control of Eastern Ukraine. ** The plan would need to be approved by the President of the United States. ** Manafort talked to Kilimnik about their plans for how to get Trump elected president. ** Manafort gave poll information to Kilimnik before and after that meeting. After the 2016 Election * When Trump was elected on November 8 2016, people from Russian businesses and the Russian government tried to meet with him right away. * Trump was not president yet. Obama was still the president, and Trump would be the next president. * Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of an important Russian wealth fund, connected with Erik Prince. Prince was a Trump supporter who was connected with Steve Bannon. Dmitriev wanted to talk about US-Russian relations. * Dmitriev also gave a plan for Russia and the US to a friend of Kushner’s who passed on pre-inauguration + Bannon and Rex Tillerson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson Category:Mueller Report